


Harry and the Hedge

by ErisAcolyte



Category: Changeling: The Lost, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Bad Poetry, Body Horror, Canon Abuse, Changeling the Lost, Gen, Just a preview, Mind fuckery, More tags to be added as they apply, Severus Snape - Freeform, World of Darkness, a cut-rate Noel Fielding, animal cruelty, bad language, britishisms, fairy nonsense, feel free to use this idea for your own fic, may continue may not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:09:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27328588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErisAcolyte/pseuds/ErisAcolyte
Summary: I don’t have the stamina for a full, proper nanowrimo, but I will try to do a little writing each day. Below the cut is the start of a possible Harry Potter AU. If you like the idea, feel free to use it in your own fics.
Kudos: 5





	1. A Gentry in the Park

"Get out and don't come back!" Aunt Petunia screeched, slamming the door behind him. Sniffling, the boy wrapped his arms around himself for warmth against the chill of winter, and made his way to the local park.

He knew, from grim experience, that there was a hollow tree he could find shelter in, there. 

Of course, he hadn't expected there to be another person in the park...

She approached, confident, seemingly unphased by the chill. Up close, her hair was wild and her eyes glinted, like cats eyes. She smelled, improbably, of damp earth and rain.

"What are you doing outside on a night like this, little boy?" He voice was lilting, but rusty and the movement of her lips when she spoke hinted of fangs beneath.

"...m'aunt told me to get out." He mumbled, seemingly unable to back away from the strange woman. 

The woman blinked at that, then blinked again-- like a snake's. "Does she not love you?"

"No." He shook his head and she sighed, reaching a long, claw-tipped hand. "Would you like to be loved?"

"...yes?" He felt the words drawn from him, as if in a dream. Dimly, he felt his heart racing and thought, perhaps, that he should flee...but his feet were not agreeing. 

"I could love you, little snake." She smiled, the fangs now evident. "Take my hand and we'll leave this awful suburb." She spat the last, like a curse.

Danger warred with longing and Harry let his heart beat his head, grasping her taloned hand as the grubby little park faded around them, and the thorns descended.


	2. A Serpent in the Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Its the 2nd day of Nanowrimo, and my second entry in this series! I don't know how far this will go, but this plot bunny's got a few hops left in it, still.

From the time he was born until just after his first birthday, the boy named Harry James Potter was raised in a place of love.

From the time he took his first, unsteady steps until the day the door slammed behind him, the boy called Boy was raised in a place of fear.

From the age of seven, until the day she could hold him back from the world no longer, the changeling called Tatterscale was raised in a place of wonder.

***

The first time he entered Mother's Garden, he was pulled along through sharp, tangled thorns that tore first his clothes, then his flesh. He went from the cold, uncaring womb of a Council playpark in Surrey to birthing anew in a bright, sunny garden. Much like the first time the boy was born, he landed there naked, bloody and crying.

Now that Surrey was far behind them, the strange woman he'd met in the park had shed her glamours like an ill-fitting cloak, revealing the true beauty and horror of the being, beneath.

She was tall for a ~~woman~~ _human_ , with wiry muscle and wild patches of fur and hair growing here and there from her body like an assortment of manes. Her hands and feet ended in large, ragged claws and when she smiled down at him, her teeth were equally pointed and her eyes no longer looked anything like a human's, at all. She leant down to scoop him up into her strong arms, and he found himself envolped in the scent of earth, or rotting vegetation, of flower, of blood.

She cradled him to her breast as if he were no more than a newborn babe, and he marvelled to see insects, birds and serpents scuryying in and out of her massive mane of hair.

A serpent coiled around her long, pointed ear stared back at him, _'What are you looking at, little human?'_

 _'Sorry.'_ he mumbled back, ducking his head, sheepishly. The woman snatched at his lowered chin with her claws, piercing flesh once more, and raised his face up to meet hers.

"You speak to snakes, little one? How fitting, I was just about to ask you which form you would like to take."

"F-form?" He stammered, staring into the wild, amber depths of her slit-pupilled eyes.

"Of course, little one." She let go of his chin to sweep her arm, expansively, across the sunlit garden, grounds and forests beyond. "I am the Beast Mother- my garden is for things that crawl, swim and fly."

She taps at her chest, which rumbles oddly, like a great purring beast. "And my heart, such as it is, if for beasts." She sighs. "I said I would love you, little snake. But human boys cannot have my heart; only beasts."

She looks down at him, again, yellow eyes gleaming intently. "Do you agree? Or would you like me to send you back, young..."

She trails off, expectantly, and Harry, somehow, knows what he needs to say. "Harry Potter."

She grins, widely. "I thought you might say that."

She lowers him to the ground and, ever so gently, helps him strip off what scraps of Dudley's cast-offs still remain.

"Welcome to the Garden, little snake." She wipes away the blood from the hundred scratches and punctures the thorns had inflicted and intones, in way the boy knows to be important.

"For human boys, my sunlight burns. For little snakes, it warms." He jumps, then, as his skin warms up and takes on a pattern of jewel-bright scales, the bright rays of the garden washing away the memory of Surrey's winter chill.

"For human boys, my food is poison. For little snakes, it nourishes." She pierces the skin of her own, nut-brown arm and honey flows forth from the wound. He drinks, hesitantly at first, but then greedily as each swallow seems to burn him from within and make him strong.

"For human boys, my beasts are predators. For little snakes, they will be prey." Pain rips through him and his mouth feels like its splitting open. When the pain passes, he checks, gingerly, and feels two brand new fangs.

She smiles, warmly, like he imagines his mother would have, long ago and cards her fingers through his messy, black hair.

"For human boys, there is no place in my heart. For little snakes, my heart is as open as the sky." She opens her own chest, as easy as others would take off their shirt, and reveals a green, pulsing thing beneath, alive with buzzing movement, like a beehive. She cuts half away, and rips the boy's chest open in kind. It hurts so much he thinks he must be about to die, but then she pinches the wound closed with her clawed fingertips and takes a piece of something red and pulsing-- his heart?-- and places it in her own chest, closing it back up like a tidy box.

"I will take the human boy's name, Harry Potter. You will call me Mother, little snake, and I will call you... Tatterscale."

  
She smiles, and the last of the dark days in the cupboard on Privet Drive was away in light and warmth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, there's more of this. Hell, there might even be another chapter tomorrow.


	3. A Boy in the Cupboard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My third Nanowrimo chapter is here! Apologies for the gore that lies benath this note...

How to describe, to mortal listeners, what happened in the Garden? To be there, is to be one thing...to leave, is to become another thing, entirely.

Even Harry, whose experience lasted for years, would remember the details only hazily, like a sweet dream, or half-remembered nightmare.  
  
He remembers breaking.

He remembers tearing.

An animagus would be horrified to hear of Harry's first transformations from boy to serpent. Werewolves, like Remus Lupin, would be less shocked, but no less unsettled.  
  
Skin had to be sloughed from muscle to be replaced with new, gleaming scales. Bones had to be broken and reformed to create a serpentine spine.  
  
The first time was hell.  
  
The second, little better.  
  
But human Harry's body was not made for the Garden, nor for the Beast Mother's heart, so the the newly named Tatterscale perservered until the transformations came quicker, easier...

Soon enough, the name "Harry Potter" and the life it entailed slipped away, entirely, to be replaced by the simple, but wonderful life of Tatterscale. Strong coils, sharp teeth, deadly venom. All things in the Garden were his prey, and all places his home. 

Mother loved him, then and kept him twined around her.

Dimly, later, Harry will remembr biting her enemies, intimidating her rivals and hunting down her prey. Late at night, years later, bathed in cold sweat, the taste of hot blood will fill Harry's mouth and he will wonder; were those 'prey' he'd eaten...animals?

But for the time spent in the Garden, Tatterscale is happy and loved, so much as any snake-shaped boy could be.

***

Of course, much like Adam and Eve, there came a day when Tatterscale had to leave the Garden. He came back to himself, more than his fuzzy, reptilian thoughts usually allowed for, to see Mother's slitted eyes welling with tears.

  
"Oh, my precious little snake. There is a prophecy upon you." She sighed, stroking the shimmering scales around his head. "I can keep you from the world of men no longer. You have come of age."

  
She slid him from her shoulders and he flows down, obedient but more confused than he had been in years. What was happening?

  
She opens a hole in the thick, brambled Hedge that surrounds her Garden and gestures Tatterscale to it. 

"I have had you from seven to eleven. I must lose you until you are seventeen." She intones, voice choked. "Fulfill your prophecy, my little snake, and return to your Mother's breast one day."

Tatterscale jolts, suddenly, his body seizing and shaking as he grows upward into something much weaker than his massive, serpentine form. An eleven year old boy, naked and shivering once more.

He gapes at her. "But- you sssssaid you loved me!" His voice is rusty and sibilant from years unused to human speech and he looks over his treacherous body, miserably. Patches of scales still shimmer here and there on his skin and, running his tongue over his teeth, he easily finds his fangs...but there the changes end.

Mother leans down, so much larger now, and taps her chest. "I do love you, my little Tatterscale. However far into the land of men and wizards you must journey, you will always have a piece of my heart." She taps his chest, even the lightest touch of her taloned fingers piercing his now weak, human flesh. "And I will always have a piece of yours."

He whimpers, and she enfolds him in a hug that is far too hot, too strong for a human boy. "Be cunning, be careful. The wizards will try and take your secrets from you, try to make you their own. But you belong to me, as I belong to you. Fulfill their geas upon you, and come home to me."

Abruptly, she lets him go and _pushes_ -

-and he is forced back through the Thorns.

***

Leaving the Thorns hurts even more than entering them had, in the first place, so many years ago.

Tatterscale lands, bleeding and shaking, in a tiny, dark place that smells of musty air and chemicals. A boy stares at him, green eyes and messy black hair identical to his own. The boy's clothes are tattered and far too big for him. They stare at each other for a long time, Tatterscale finally reaching out to trace the lightning scar on the boy's head; the one that matches his own.

The boy... _explodes_.

Woven grass, tangled vines, thorny burrs and snake scales are all that remain of the boy and Tatterscale picks through them, instinctively searching for _something_. He finds it, quickly enough: a lock of brilliant, glossy red hair, tied with a spare bit of twine. It melts into his hand, leaving a small, red mark like an oroboros on the palm of his hand. There's a distant sound, like a woman screaming...

Suddenly, memories flood into him, knocking him back with a strangled scream of his own. Nearly four years of the cupboard. Of the Dursleys. Of being the boy, the _freak_. Beatings and shouting and nothing like enough food. The boy had taken it all, quietly and without resistance. After all, the boy was only a placemarker- a fetch crafted to keep Tatterscale's absence hidden until he could return.

But now the boy's memories were his own and they _hurt_.

Every beating, every neglect- nights spent bruised, bloody and starving- they merged with his own memories of the Garden until they became blurry; more like a fairy tale than the last four years of his life.

Every inch of Tatterscale cried out with pain, with fury, with loss and he screamed.

And then the door to the cupboard was wrenched open, with Aunt Petunia looking down on a bloody, naked Harry Potter screaming in a pile of greenery. 

Perhaps understandably she screamed, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per the lore of Changeling: the Lost, a fetch is a copy of a person taken by the Fae, holding a piece of their Soul. It usually acts like the original person it was copied from, but is often 'off' to people close to the original person.
> 
> For those that have played WoD games, I'll be playing fast and loose with the canon, but keeping the *feel* of the Gentry. For those *not* familiar with White Wolf games, suffic to say that Harry has just returned after 4 years missing in the land of the Fae, and no one seems to have been the wiser...


	4. A Snake in the Walls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another day, another chapter. I know these are short, but I'm just happily surprised that I'm still writing this, at all!

Tatterscale screamed.

  
Petunia screamed at Tatterscale.

They both screamed at each other.

As the party not _currently_ covered in quickly rotting plant matter and blood, Petunia recovered first and started shouting, instead.

The Boy would have simply allowed the shouting to wash over him, as his due. Tatterscale, however, had no such compuctions and, following his instincts, turned into a small grass snake and slithered into a crack in the wall.

Petunia went back to screaming.

***

Unbeknowest to Tatterscale, his first Hogwarts acceptance letter had arrived three days ago. The Boy, lacking any great curiosity or self-preservation, had simply handed the letter to Uncle Vernon, like he did every other piece of mail.

Vernon had burnt the letter in front of the Boy, gleefully, and had not had the presence of mind to be unnerved that the Boy showed no great reaction to his hopes of escape going up in flames. 

Petunia, however, was no fool and she'd found the Boy's behaviour unsettling ever since that fateful winter's evening where she'd turfed him out on a cold, winter's night. Upon returning the next morning, the Boy had seemed unharmed and, indeed, unfazed.

For the next four years, there had been no 'freakish' incidents and, honestly, no sort of incidents, of any kind, at all. The Boy had been quiet, hard-working and placid in the face of what Petunia could admit, in her quieter moments of self-reflection, was abuse.

It was...weird.

But who was Petunia to complain? After all, it was like her prayers had been answered. Lily's son, no longer a frightening, magical time bomb looming over her perfect little family, but a silent, dutiful presence that was blessedly easy to ignore on a daily basis.

After the first Hogwart letter had gone up in smoke, more arrived. Owls lingered in their garden and, the morning that Tatterscale and Petunia had had their screaming match, she'd been lividly angry to find 12 tiny letters scrunched up in her egg carton!

She'd gone to the cupboard to yank the Boy out and send him to buy new eggs, not at all expecting to be confronted with a feral, screaming, naked boy covered in blood and what looked like garden clippings.

She _really_ hadn't expected him to turn into a snake and disappear into her bloody walls, either.

Behind her, she heard the thundering footsteps of her beloved husband, Vernon, coming to investigate and wished, feelingly, in a way she hadn't since her mispent teenage years, for a fag.

"What's wrong, petal? Is the boy causing more trouble?" Vernon grumbled, already getting red in the face. Petunia nodded, curtly. "He's disappeared. I need to make a phone call." She bit out, striding past him, much to his surprise.

The phone call was short, tense and remarkably curt. 

After all, not since leaving her old neighborhood for good had Petunia had any reason to want to call Severus bloody Snape.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always wondered about the dynamic between Petunia and the other characters. While she's not likely to be the main focus of the story, I'm hoping I'll at least hint at some nuance, there.


	5. A Wizard at Privet Drive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nanowrimo continues and so, too, does this fic. The bad language is hefty, here, but years of living in England have innured me to such.

There were really very few reasons for Severus Snape to willingly turn up in a place like Privet Drive. Although not on his list until a few minutes ago, "Lily's boy turned into a blasted snake and disappeared into my cunting walls!", made the top spot.

  
He stood in front of the house and sneered. Fully-detached, pristine garden and a shiny extra car sat in the drive. It was the perfect picture of middle class paradise and the surly young potions mater loathed it with every inch of his being.

He'd dressed 'muggle', with an ease that his old Death Eater compatriots would have goggled at, but kept to his usual colour pallete, grimly aware of how much the 'aging goth' he must've looked.

Fortunately for him, Noel Fielding was still at university, so the local kids whizzing past on their bikes simply called him a 'Vampire Wanker', instead of a cut-rate Fielding.

He stalked to the front door, which Petunia opened quickly, before he could even raise his fist to knock. Her giant walrus of a husband (only briefly seen years ago when he'd crashed Lily's wedding drunk on a frankly emabarassing amount of MD 20/20) stood back in the hallway, shaking his head. 

"Are you sure you don't want me to stick around and help out, Pet?" He asked, squeezing his massive arms into his jacket like sausage poured into its casing. Petunia pursed her lips and called back, "Of course not, darling. You and Dudders have a nice time at the cinema!"

Severus caught her gaze and mouthed, ' _Dudders_?'

She simply glared at him until the large, porcine man and his little piglet of a son were bundled into the car and driving out of sight.

"Get in." She snipped, nearly closing the door on him in her hurry to get them inside.

"...Dudders?" He repeated.

"Fuck off, Sev. This is an emergency." She grumbled, dropping her affected 'I do my weekly shop at Waitrose' accent in the face of her childhood enemy.

"Why not owl Dumbledore, then? M'sure he gave you the means." He jerked his thumb towards the window, where a trio of owls roosted (smugly, Petunia felt) in the front garden's tree.

"I'm not using those cunting owls; bearded twat's using them to drive me mad, I know he is." she snarled, stomping down the hallway and pointing to a boot cupboard under the stairs.

  
Unbeknowest to Severus, she had quickly removed all signs that someone might have lived in the cupboard before he arrived, and swept the rotting vegetation into a dustpan on the side. 

"He was screaming his 'ead off, scared the piss out of me, turned into a snake and went into the walls." She jabbed her finger, accusingly, at him.

" _Do_ something about this."

He snorted, but got his wand out, rolling his eyes at her flinch. "How'd you think I was gonna' find him, Tuney? Whistle for 'im?"

She folded her arms tight across her chest. "Get it sorted, then." She tugged at her hair, a bad habit she'd thought she'd kicked years ago, right along with bumming fags and rolling her school skirt up to catch a lad.

"Once you've found 'im, though, that's _it_. I don't care about fucking blood wards or what-have-you. He's been a pain in my arse since I found him on my bloody doorstep. Take him and keep him." She stopped just sort of spitting and, overwhelmed, stomped to the kitchen to make a rather vexed cup of tea.

"Milk and two for me." Severus called, dryly, as he began to use the 'point me' spell to find the boy, his wand tilting towards the stairs.

"Go fuck yourself."

***

Upstairs, Tatterscale had emerged from the walls in the bathroom, where, due to Vernon stiffing the workmen years ago, the bathtub wasn't _quite_ flush with the floor. It was cold on the tiles, but he couldn't bring himself to change back into the Boy. The memories of what the last four years had been for his fetch were too much for Tatterscale to handle.

Too messy, too complicated- too _sad_.

Snakes, however, were rather simple creatures and Tatterscale was more than happy to find a hiding spot in the bathroom's boiler cupboard for now and attempt an escape at nightfall.

Vibrations in the floor alerted him before he reached the cupboard and he darted back as the bathroom door swung open to reveal a tall, black-clad man pointing a stick at him, smelling strongly of herbs and river-water.

"Kindly change back, Mr. Potter." The voice vibrated down, almost incomprehensible to the mostly-deaf serpent.

Tatterscale, relying more on instinct than anything else, made a mad dash back to the bathtub.

He didn't hear the cursing above him, but _did_ feel the sudden wash of something electric that made his muscles clench taught, completely paralysed.

***

The Boy Who Lived lay immobilised, as a bloody _grass snake_ on the bathroom floor.

Severus, who had long been dreading the boy's arrival at Hogwarts (comparisons to his late father already lined up in a neat row for him by his long-held paranoia) was more than a little stymied.

He had been prepared to hate the boy.

He had not, in the slightest, been prepared to pop the boy in his coat pocket like a root cutting.

Still, years working first as a spy, second as a teacher (generally, the harder of the two professions) allowed him to rally. He trotted quickly back downstairs and poked is head into the flowery kitchen where Petunia was staring down into her mug of tea ("Surrey FA", it read) as if it held all the answers to life.

"Found 'im."

"Thank _fuck_ for that."

"Where's 'is things, then?"

She waved a hand. "Fucked if I know. Just get him out of here. If I never see you _or_ him again it'll be too soon." She managed, looking about as bemused as he felt.

"Well, ta-bloody-ra, then." He grumbled, rolling his eyes heavenward. "Thanks for the memories, Tuney."

He made to leave but paused, briefly at the sight of the sitting room. "Is it all you hoped for, _Pet_?" He drawled, sarcastically.

Once again, years as a spy and a teacher came to his rescue, as he neatly dodged the flying mug, raced out of the door and apparated away with a satisfyingly loud POP. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meeting people who knew you from childhood always brings the worst out in people, doesn't it?


	6. A Potter at Spinner's End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nearly missed posting today! Bloody health issues.

Spinner's End sits at the end of a long line of decrepit row-houses backing on to a grey and greasy river. From the outside, its as grim and forbidding as every _other_ house on the row; overgrown, yellow grass choked with weeds made up the tiny 'front garden'. Old graffiti tags splash the one outer wall that Spinner's End doesn't share with the row. 

Severus, apparating behind the overflowing skip that had been left there since he'd graduated Hogwarts, scowled up at a newer tag that read 'Vampire Wanker'.

"...really?"

He sighed and went around front, opening the door with a surreptitious wave of his wand. Inside, Spinner's End looked _nothing_ like the other houses on the row, for all that there were plenty of dubiously legal chemicals in the others, as well.

Severus Snape, upon inheriting the house from his father, had _not_ burned it to the ground, as his horrified friend Lucius had suggested upon seeing it, but fortified it into a haven worthy of the kingliest recluse.

The house was warded to the gills against wizards and muggles alike, the layout of the house expanded and twisted, replete with secret rooms and tunnels. The back garden, too, had seen extensive charm-work and now included a healthy greenhouse for various potion supplies.

It was there, on a sunny patch of grass, that Severus popped the frozen Boy-Who-Lived. He knelt down to eye level and intoned, far more seriously than he personally felt the situation warranted, "I'm going to end the Immobulus on you Mr. Potter, at which point, I expect you to turn into a human boy."

He stepped well back with a muttered 'Finite Incantatem'. The serpent immediately darted away towards some bushes. Severus sighed, feelingly. "Mr. Potter, you'll find that the property is warded against entry _and_ exit. When you're done panicking, I expect you to come inside for lunch."

He turned on his heel and went back inside, calling back "Only human beings get lunch!"

No version of Harry Potter showed his face while Severus calmly and methodically chopped vegetables, cooked pasta and diced chicken into cubes to saute. Not, indeed, until he was plating up two hearty meals at the scarred kitchen table that Harry appeared, human once more...and nude.

Severus (commendably, he felt) simply blinked.

"Ah. Petunia didn't mention that detail." He held up a finger for pause and left, coming back momentarily with a handful of old clothing. Harry, in the meantime, had seated himself at the table and begun eating chicken pasta with his bare hands. He stopped, brilliant green eyes wide and gulped. "Ssssaid human boy'ssss get lunch." He rasped out. 

"Human boys also use utensils." Severus rolled his eyes, sarcasm a welcome refuge in the face of mounting concern. "And, for what remains of my sanity, human boys wear clothes."  
He popped the bundle of clothing down on the table and Harry eyeballed it for a long moment before grabbing his fork in his fist and stabbing up more pasta. "Food firssst?" He rapsed, hopefully.

"Sure, why not?" Severus threw his hands up and sat down to eat his own pasta.

***

When Severus Snape was twelve years old Lily, his only friend in either world, be it magical or mundane, _bit_ a boy three years her senior.

It drew blood and the sight galvanised him, past the fear of being wandless, past the terror of being beaten bloody by the local lads while they tried to drown a cat in a sack in the grubby river outside his house.

He began kicking and screaming, cursing a blue streak while Lily's older sister, Petunia, stood idly by, sharing a cider with her school mates.

Lily, more Griffindor than Potter Senior could even _imagine_ , leapt into the river, amid the jeers and shouts of the people on shore. Everyone stopped fighting, Petunia's face drained of colour...

...and then Lily flopped onto the riverbank, covered in refuse, ripping open the carrier bag holding the kitten with her bare teeth. It mewed, wetly, and she sobbed, clutching it to her sodden chest.

***

And now Harry James Potter was sat in the very kitchen where Eileen Prince had begrudgingly nursed a half-drowned kitten back to health while Lily, Scourgified, with Pepper-Up steaming out her ears, grinned too brightly for the likes of Spinner's End.

Severus watched as the boy licked his plate before eyeing Severus' barely picked-at food, hopefully. Severus slid the plate over and stood once more, coming back with the quilt his own mother had wrapped Lily Evans up in while she and her son alike had cursed the girl for a sucidial maniac.

The kitten was christened Lucky.

Severus dropped the blanket on Harry's head. The boy flinched, but wrapped it around him all the same, stabbing at his new plate of pasta with unchecked vigour.

Petunia had _hated_ Lucky.

Petunia had been give Harry James Potter- Lily's son- to raise.

Petunia had egged the local chavs to drown a kitten.

Dumbledore had left Harry. James. Potter. _Lily's son!_ With Petunia, Kitten Drowner by Proxy.

Severus cleared his throat.

"When you're done eating, I'll set up the spare room for you and explain a few things." He stood, then paused, awkwardly. "I'm Severus Snape."

Harry nodded, but it was Lily's eyes staring back at him until he backed, greatfully, out of the kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and now I want pasta.


	7. A Rose amid the Thorns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 7 of Nanowrimo!

Potter was fed, washed, dressed and shown to Severus' childhood bedroom, hurriedly cleaned with as many household spells as he could remember. The boy was quiet, throughout, and questions about what had happened to him achieved only monosyllabic replies or hisses.

  
By now, any concerns that Severus might mistake the boy for his father were entirely behind him, replaced with the mounting concern that the boy had gone feral living with the Dursleys.  
Still, he gave the boy space, promising to revisit the interrogation after breakfast the next morning.

...but then Harry just _had_ to go and have screaming night-terrors.

  
***  
  
 _\--body ripped and broken again, and again, and again and again and again--_  
  
A cold shock.  
  
Bright green eyes opening in surprise before Tatterscale shook the cold water out of his messy hair like a dog.   
  
Severus Snape lowered his wand, suddenly awkward in the face of an awake Harry. "You...were having a nightmare."   
  
"Oh."  
  
"Any chance you could tell me what it entailed?"  
  
"Ent...what?"  
  
"What it was about."  
  
"...no."  
  
Severus pinched the bridge of his nose and perched on the end of the bed. "Perhaps you could enlighten me as to why not?"  
  
"Enli...?"  
  
"Tell me why not."  
  
"Dun' trussst you."  
  
Severus glanced over at him. "A reasonable concern. Is there anything I could say that would help with that?"  
  
Harry stared at him, those blasted green eyes blinking not even once, giving him no place to hide. "Sssswear."  
  
"And what should I swear?"  
  
Harry tilted his head, face scrunching up in concentration. Of all the things Severus expected to come out of the boy's mouth, bad poetry wasn't one of them.  
  
"By my heart'sss name of Tattersssscale, I grant you ssssight for one moon. Ssssee the thingssss of dream and wonder with eyessss opened like the blossom of the rose. By your name of Ssssssseverussss Sssssnape-"  
  
He paused his recitation, coughing, and Severus, struck by some mad fit of whimsy, chimed in with, "Steady on."  
  
"Too many sssssessss." Harry mumbled, before continuing, eyes fixed on a spot above Severus' head. "...you grant me the right to assssk a boon, within the sscycle of that moon. Ssswear that you sssshall grant it to me, sssso long assss it doesss not bring you harm."

  
Severus frowned, slightly, at that, but Harry simply held up a hand, and continued, "Sssswear that you will keep thisss knowledge beneath the rossse."

(A memory, deeply hidden in the darkest parts of Severus' miserable little heart, stirred).

"And let he who issss forssssworn in thisss wake to find the thornsss of thisss oath in him."

(Crawling through the blackberry bushes on his hands and knees, unsure which stains were blood and which were simply fruit).

"Madnessssss and ill luck follow you if you are falssssse."   
  
(His heart pounding, reaching back to grab Lily's pale, freckled arm and drag her through the thorns with him, out into the too-bright Summer sunlight).

"I sssshall grant thee a boon, and be followed by missssfortune sssshould I prove falssse."

(Years later, a baby in her arms and dark circles under her eyes. She asked him to make a _promise_ ).

"Do you agree?" Harry finished, looking rather intense for an eleven year old.

"...not Severus Snape, for this. Its..." Severus coughed, embarassed by the fragments of his own memory, "Bramble's Crow."  
  
Harry started, surprised evident in those treacherous green eyes. "Do you agree, then, _Bramble'ssss Crow_?"  
  
"I do." After all, he'd already sworn one promise to the boy, what harm was another? He closed his eyes tight against the flurry of emotions and confused, half-forgotten memories. 

Occlumency helping to steeet him safe to shore, his breathing settled and he opened his eyes to see-

-Harry Potter with scales patterning his skin and fangs jutting from his lips.

At least, he thought in hindsight, _he_ hadn't screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pledge used in this chapter is from the Changeling: the Lost corebook.


	8. A Secret in a Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nanowrimo Day 8! Hope people are enjoying this. ^_^

His first thought, as a career man of a paranoia, was that Harry Potter had been replaced by this...creature.

He tamped down on that one, due to his second thought which, while making no sense whatsoever, seemed rather compelling:

_Lily's eyes blown wide, lips stained with berry juice._

_"Lils! What did you do?" "Nevermind, Sev! Run! Run, and don't look back!"_

In the meantime, a tense Harry Potter blinked, his brilliant green eyes briefly narrowing into serpentine slits. "...are you okay?" He rasped, lightly. He held his hand out, tentatively.

Severus regained his composure quickly, face with the mortifying prospect of being reassured by an eleven year old.

"You cannot believe your appearance woudn't have caused some surprise, Mr. Potter." He managed, safely sarcastic.

Harry shrugged. "Tatterssscale. Or Harry, I sssuposse."

"Harry, then." Severus looked him over, carefully. "How...how did this happen?"

And Harry told him.

To Harry, this was a story of being rescued, of enduring pain to be rewarded with love.

For Severus, it was the story of a boy so horrifically abused he ran into the arms of horrific, supernatural kidnappers.

Still, his gut, twisting with these strange, fragmentary memories of childhood, told him Harry's story was real. And he had just promised, sworn, that he would keep the boy's secret.

"Your mother once dove into a river to save a kitten from drowning." He offered, surpried at his own forthcoming nature. Tonight, certainly, was a night of first.

Harry grinned, lopsidedly. "Bit foolish, that."

"Perhaps we'll make a proper Slytherin of you, Mr. Pot- Harry."

***

A tentative truce attained, Severus retreated downstairs and penned a quick letter to Albus Dumbledore. 

The twinkling old man had a lot to answer for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to comment about where you think this will go, because I'm only somewhat sure, myself!


End file.
